Gaming

You’ve probably played SuperTux in the past – it’s been around for a while. In your distro’s repository, you’ll have 0.1.3, the last stable release, dating from 2005. Development on the unstable 3.n branch has been going along mostly unremarked for more than a decade, and now a new stable release, 0.4, bursts onto the scene!

Feral Interactive has made the Linux port of the F1 2015 Formula One racing game available now via the Steam Store and their own Feral Store.

F1 2015 is a racing game released for Windows and other platforms last year. This game was made by the folks at Codemasters and uses the EGO Engine 4.0. As covered already, Feral recommends a GeForce GTX 970 or better to play this game. The minimum GPU requirement is a GT 640. Feral hasn't communicated any details yet about Mesa/Gallium3D or AMDGPU-PRO support for this game.

With today's release of F1 2015 for Linux as the popular Formula One racing game, only NVIDIA graphics are listed as supported but I decided to try this game anyways with the AMDGPU-PRO and RadeonSI Gallium3D drivers.

I tried today's F1 2015 Linux release with both a Radeon R9 285 and R9 Fury. I started with the AMDGPU-PRO 16.20.3 driver release from last week.

Immediately after announcing the Tomb Raider 2013 1.1.1 patch for Linux gamers, Feral Interactive had the great pleasure of announcing the official launch of the F1 2015 racing game for SteamOS and Steam on Linux.

Earlier this week I published some Dota 2 Vulkan vs. OpenGL benchmarks with AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards under Linux. Since then I received some feedback from Valve with regards to Dota 2 on the Source 2 Engine testing along with a better demo to use for benchmarking and also using the latest Dota 2 Vulkan DLC updates. So here is a fresh look at the OpenGL vs. Vulkan performance for this popular Valve game on an assortment of NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards.

Today, May 26, 2016, Feral Interactive, the video game published for GNU/Linux and Mac OS X operating systems, announced the availability of a new patch for the Linux port of the Tomb Raider 2013 reboot.

Valve's engineers have pushed a new build of the SteamOS Debian-based gaming operating system, version 2.80, to the brewmaster_beta channel for public testing.

SteamOS 2.80 Beta is here more than a month after the release of the stable SteamOS 2.70 update, and it promises some exciting new features for those who use AMD GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) to play their Steam games.

Feral Interactive announced today that F1 2015 will be released on May 26th for Linux; it will be the first ever FORMULA ONE™ game to grace Linux. Developed and published by Codemasters for consoles and Windows PC, F1 2015 is the most realistic simulation of FORMULA ONE racing ever.

A COMPUTER EXPLORER has managed to take a PS4 and turn it into a Linux box that can be used to play Steam games. Why? Progress, people, and porting. If you can think it, you might as well give it a go.

Alert the masters! YouTuber OsirisX must be banished, for they have orchestrated an unholy union. OsirisX installed Arch Linux on a PlayStation 4 that still had version 1.76 of its firmware, and then installed Steam on the desktop OS. Blasphemy!

Following last week's AMDGPU-PRO 16.20.3 "Beta 2" driver release of AMD's new hybrid driver stack for Linux that makes use of the AMDGPU open-source kernel DRM driver with the closed-source OpenGL driver derived from Catalyst / Radeon Software, I set out to do a fresh open vs. closed-source driver comparison. For the Radeon R9 285, R9 290, and R9 Fury, I compared the performance of this new AMDGPU-PRO driver against Mesa 11.3-devel Git and Linux 4.6 for the latest open-source driver stack.

Feral sure do have quite a few games coming out this year for us, exciting. I just hope they continue to work on previous ports like XCOM 2 and Tomb Raider which aren't quite up to scratch. We are already behind on the recent XCOM 2 patch and DLC, so it's time for them to up their game.

The CRYENGINE source code is now officially available on github for anyone to take a look and tinker with, you need to be aware of their licensing though.

I think it's great this engine companies are moving to a more open model, even if it's not properly "open source" it's a big step in the right direction. Their license does have a few restrictions placed on it, but I am not good with all this legal speak.

It certainly looks like the type of game we need for our livestreaming. It looks silly and exciting, exactly what Worms should be. The bit where the worm screams in terror at the TNT actually cracked me up!

Turmoil is a charming looking simulation game that should be coming to Linux after the full release next month. It's due out on June 2nd, and the developers have repeatedly stated in the Steam forum that both Mac and Linux will be supported, but not until after then.

Hopefully they will gradually introduce support for more cards, as that's quite a limited selection right now. Still, Vulkan is young and not many games support it yet so they can actually afford to take a little time with it to get it right.

Back when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were announced in 2013, I recall there was much talk about the "end of console gaming" because both consoles had x86 architecture. In effect, that makes them barely different than most modern PCs. This knowledge hasn't caused the great, total shift to PC gaming that forum prophets foretold at the time, of course, but a recent video showing a PS4 running Linux Steam games reveals just how closely the device is related to ordinary PCs.

More in Tux Machines

Why open source could be IBM's key to future success in the cloud

Do those same developers need IBM? Developers certainly benefit from IBM's investments in open source, but it's not as clear that those same developers have much to gain from IBM's cloud. Google, for example, has done a stellar job open sourcing code like TensorFlow and Kubernetes that feeds naturally into running related workloads on Google Cloud Platform. Aside from touting its Java bonafides, however, IBM has yet to demonstrate that developers get significant benefits for modern workloads on its cloud.
That's IBM's big challenge: Translating its open source expertise into real, differentiated value for developers on its cloud.

Top 8 Debian-Based Distros

Most people tend to forget that despite Ubuntu's success over the years, it's still just a distro based on another distro - Debian. Debian on its own, however, isn't really well suited for newer users...hence the explosion of distros based on Debian over the recent years. There are lot of great choices for Linux users. Which one is best for you?

Compact, rugged IoT gateway offers dual GbE with PoE

Inforce has launched a $250 “Inforce 6320” IoT gateway that runs Linux on a quad -A53 Snapdragon 410, and offers WiFi, BT, GPS, HDMI, USB, -30 to 85°C support, and dual GbE ports with PoE.
Inforce Computing’s $250 Inforce 6320 is a compact (170 x 95 x 42mm) IoT gateway that runs Ubuntu Core (Snappy) and Debian on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410E. Inforce promises “periodic upstream kernel based BSP releases [that] include in-depth documentation along with a host of royalty-free software.” The Debian BSP includes LXDE, drivers for all available interfaces, as and access to the Inforce TechWeb tech support services.